MassArtEd.org

   A while south african who is parallel to Alexander Calder for his fanciful and absurd

multi media sculptures..I saw him for the first time or his works at The Seattle Art

Museum.  On the wall of the first floor gallery were plates from Persia and Islam and

William Kentridge's shadow play "Processional" that was of the many puppets of

the people that I interpreted as being from Dafur evacuating and leaving their homeland

with the music in the background of "What a friend I have in Jesus". The processional

is really sad...there are lynched bodies hanging from sticks that some are carrying on their

shoulders. 

  William Kentridge is best known for his puppets...some are made from scraps of metal

on wire and then projected as shadows on a skrim.  His inspiration is drawn from

Alfred Jarry and others from The Theatre of the Absurd.  He is mocking the oppression

of the people of color who live in South Africa.  The Frye museum which is in

Seattle at the other end of the city held an exhibit of puppet making that Mr.Kentridge

conducts in his studio in Johannesburg, South Africa andin Durbin.  The demonstrations

of puppetry are about the oppression and violations of human rights. 

  He is a worthwhile artist and is worth emanating in my opinion.

This show was part of a celebration of international womens day.....Thursday, March 4, 2010.

  At the Regal Theatre...a movie with the Duchess of York and the author of the book Half

the Sky (stems from a chinese proverb about how women hold up half the sky).  His wife,

Sharon and he (Nick Kristoff) are working hard at facing the oppression of women and

what is being done about it. The panel discussion at NYU auditorium was thorough...

very moving African women were singing original songs, a white women, Ms. Birch

sang an original song and played the piano.  Three films were shared, one about the

forced marriages in Euretrea where women who are raped by men are often forced to

marry their rapist.  The law because of the featured woman in the film and her father

is being changed albeit very slowly.  The most stirring scene in the movie from my

view was of the villagers gathered in a circle and talking with the men who had raped

their women. IN some cases, the man went to his wife and apologized ...they both kiss

and make up.  Very awkward to me to see this but in the movie the villagers are laughing

and even the violated wife is smiling.

  The other issues addressed by the Duchess of York was about the oppression in Nepal

of women who are seen as genetic garbage for being made pregnant before marriage

and the conditions in Haiti. In each case the films and tales end on positive notes with

positive input by the panel ....that the women in Euretrea are being defended and the

law is changing, that the business women in Haiti are hopeful that the attention brought

to their city will help to rebuild a better city with better opportunities for business to

thrive once again.   The people in Nepal are being helped and in Afghanistan there are 

secret schools being formed so that the girls who number in the thousands may attend

school and be educated.

  The overall and repeated message of the evening was that these issues are solved through

education...this message was heard at the discussions at Harvard by Robert Reich economist,

and are said over and over again...we need to look toward education as the answer for these

problems.

  It was not so bad...the evening was not a soap box lecture..it was an eye opener about

these third world less developed nations.

This is Jonathan who is a family member with a brother, Alli (cerebral palsey victim in wheelchair next to him,) Sarah, His Mom, and his sister Seito.  Jonathan is making his island.

He and his family are creating together at the Nate Smith House as part of an on going workshop series that is conducted by Ed Pazzanese and assisted by Tamara Safford, Pepper Greene and other guests from Spontaneous Celebrations.  The workshop meets for two hours and is still on going...it began a year and a half ago.  The Families have different disorders, deaf, cerebral palsey, downes syndrome and autism.  The projects include making islands from collage and sculpey, telling the story of the islands (see videos of sign language tellings on Families Creating Together, at Ning.com click on peace sign.)

The other activities of this last year included making memory patches on cloth that become pillows and wall hangings, making dream boxes, (diaramas of dreams in plastic shoe boxes) and dynamic dramatic storytellings with Ibrahim from Israel.

The class is sponsored through Community Partners at Mass College of Art, Art Ed Department and the main participants are Ed Pazzanese and Tamara Safford, Pepper Greene and Lois Bergren.

Summer Vacation in Northwestern United States....

My colleague, Ed Pazzanese and I decided to fly via Trans Air to Los Angeles and participate in my grandson, Hunter's graduation from New Roads HIgh School in Malibu...Great Event ..lots of dinners and talks with the children..visits to the folk art museum and a grand tour of the working class district in L.A. ..lots of walks along Venice Beach and the Venice Canals with Ed whom  I work and socialize, grow and worry about the world  with and earn a living through Community Partners' Families Creating Together.

We kept on Looking For America as we boarded the train in Los Angeles, Union Station and travelled via Amtrak Rail Pass Coach from Los Angeles to San Francisco where we  stayed at a Youth Hostel on Mason Street for a few days, taking in the galleries on Geary Street,  Russian Art, Tamara Lempeke tales told to us by the nicest curator, Travis Wilson, who  confided in us that he goes home in the evening and quietly paints his own idea of art inspired by The Weinstein Gallery artists on display. The Russian Art at the Nevska  Fine Art Gallery..is surprisingly not so hard to think about as a style of art to imitate.....many Marc Chagalls, Many unusual landscapes of the Russian Farms  including a Chicken House with brighly lit chickens imbibing kernals of corn.

Then...after some beer and hamburgers on Larkspur Island where working prison San Quentin is located and some eye opening art about the future of the planet at the Berkeley Museum of Fine Art ...their question was... does art help to save the environment? (this exhibit included a canoe shaped space ship ready to leave for  a new planet , populated with many thousand village sorts of people) we boarded the train for  Seattle ...amazingly, the sleeping coach style did not daunt our ambition to see America... the people on the train were totally interesting, Amish School Teachers, Librarians from  Centrillia Washington, Prison Wardens, Bar Tenders, Recovery from Cancer vacationers,  .....amazingly safe to socialize among....the dining room on the Amtrak Empire Builder  was not so expensive. Meals cost on the average of $7.50 unless you are up for wine which jacks up the price to about $15.00.  I stuck to Pepsi Cola and Canada Dry Ginger Ale most  of the time, only now and then did I adventure forth into a beer.

Seattle holds the Green Tortoise Youth Hostel ...not only are the accomodations as good  as sleep a way camp, but breakfasts are free...you can whip up your own pancakes, every  other night dinners are provided....the computers are free....(in San Francisco they cost  $3.00 an hour), and best of all the hostel is near Puget Sound and Pike's Market Place  where we took in Slim Pickens Jug Band Music, Three Sisters Cafe, and found strawberries  are about $2.00 a pint.    Long Walks and Talks with my old friends ....we listened and looked in particular at  William Kentridge, of South Africa, Shadow Puppet Maker ...mostly a fantastic  shadow box show of The Processions..about.leaving Dafur,  on the wall at the Seattle MFA.

But it is not over yet...Ed went back to Boston Via Chicago  on the EMpire Builder, and I went on to Parksville on the Silver Star Amtrak train... in Canada..well, British Columbia I  visited Cathedral Forest, stayed with friends who happen to be Foresters....then boarding the Empire Builder in  Seattle,  on to Chicago and Boston.  The Cathedral Forest will be on display November 6th in the  Roslindale Open Studio on Kittridge Street at the pleasant victorian home of  Phyllis Bluhm, long time associate in the arts.

Alvin Ailey

Pepper Greene and I went to see the Alvin Ailey Dance at the Opera House in Boston.  The Introduction was a film with Judith Jemison the present director of the Alvin Ailey. She introduced and explained the classic piece, Revelations, that was the evenings performance, and told interesting background biographical tales about Alvin Ailey.    

The music of the evening was the famous Gospel Music of our nation, Wade in the Water, Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?, Rock-a-my-soul in the Bosom of Abraham,     Oh Sinner Man...and others..     

What was unique?  The dancers appeared in Turkish Costumes, the gold pleated   whirling dervish for part of the performance.  And what else? Not all the choreography was a religious fervor nor celebration of the book of revelations as we think of it and as it was usually performed...added gestures:  The woman almost punches her partner in the face a dozen times but never quite, The two partners, woman and man intersaw wood or so it seems with each other gesticulating their arms back and forth between each others arms.....as if they are at the filing cabinet fighting over files...who has the authority to put that issue in that folder?  

Fight...Fight...Fight...

It was Fierce!

Salem Dance at MassArt Dance Project

A sneak preview of the grace of The Dance Project brought to us by Colleges at the Fenway
Directed by Kristen Young and Sandra Parks
April 18 at Tower Auditorium
What was so enticing.... it is so young and fresh!!
What is so beautiful and unusual, ...some of the dancers are not so skinny but pleasantly robust... plump.
What is so worth bringing home and writing about? "Amazing Grace"  the war in Iraq, in which the dancers wore fatigues and blessed the photos of their soldiers now serving overseas...
Hard to be graceful about.

Senagalese Dance

Held at the Dance Complex, Fatou D'jai performed with her troop...
Senegalese dance and song are always energizing..
What was unique? The black female dancers and white female dancers were in perfect synchronicity side by side.
My role: I did not dance, I videoed.  For a change.

Last Week I went to African Dance and stayed for a very refreshing and enriching dance recital at The Dance Complex. The recital was a review of several choreographers. The style of dance was modern dance and I had not seen a dance performance in quite some time although I still like to attend the AFrican Dance at that school.

It was a surprise to see the dancers articulating in the modern dance form the same anxiety that I feel about the ritual of school. The stage was set with a rack of clothing in the background. Many suits and dresses were hanging from them.  The front of the stage was a school desk...the old fashioned kind with a ink and quil pen place and a chair that lifts up...Several female dancers celebrated that anxiety...looking and being well .... and receiving passing grades in school. They galloped over to the desk in the front and knelt on the chair as if in earnest prayer....seeking some higher powers guidance....their was a frantic pace to the dance...galloping, racing...being in the throng..the maine...part of it...looking well groomed...a dance of anxiousness.

The dances that were the usual with live chamber music did not impress me that much but the last dance was a dance of this age of technocracy...a dance of a robot. Looking as if it were a part of Mummenshanz (the swiss mime company), a Dance rappears on the set with a sheep cloth on and at her feet is a long red tube ..and the tube has a frog like mechanized toy at the end of it...I am not sure what the frog was all about but snippets of science fiction creeped into my head as I watched this allurment by the red tube with the creature at the end....Finally the female dancer is alone with a sheepskin on and in the center of her chest is a strange science fiction creature...a bird or a n alien of some kind...it was a hypnotic experience to see as this dancer concluded her piece in a strange robonic quiver and I am not sure if the bird like alien was the victor or if it was just part of the evening.....Most impressive piece.